CMD's new health adviser...

... is Nick Seddon, recently of Reform, from where he has issued a constant stream of platitude-filled rhetoric review papers. He spent some time working for Circle - who profit* by cherry-picking healthcare services, whilst depending upon NHS infrastructure, critical care capacity and workforce training. Needless to say, Seddon is gunning hard for further privatisation - and has lost no time in spouting PR puff on behalf of his corporate pals.

He also appears to be a schoolboy - and if there's one thing (there's many, of course) that pishes me off about UK politics, it's the preponderance of university-hacks-turned-think-tankers who are given roles in Government. For all his missives on what's wrong with the NHS, I doubt the fresh-faced get has the slightest idea of what it's like on the frontline. He actually makes me want to puke.

Well the Tories despise the NHS with a passion and are hell bend on destroying it as quickly as they can, to be replaced with the most expensive and inefficient system they can come up with, whose sole purpose is to line the pockets of themselves and their mates as shareholders / directors.

I would love to say what I think of him and his ilk but unfortunately not only would the swear filter remove it but I would receive a ban that would persist beyond death into the afterlife I mean eternal void.

PS it's worth remembering that Nick Seddon used to do PR media spin for Circle (he's an English graduate, not clinical staff) - hence the number of times Circle appear in his various pieces at Reform as an example of the kind of "outside expertise" that should be brought into the NHS, don'tchaknow.

He's a Jeremy Hunt of the first order.
Please don't call him a PR, there's plenty of us who hate the slippery, lying knobsac too, he's just a clanging empty vessel, full of the hyperbole and vile doublespeak so beloved of his new best friends. He's a Tory lickspittle, to be despised and loathed as much as his former paymasters.
Other than that he seems a fine chap.

They basically invited Rupert Murdoch to write their media and broadcast policy before the last election. Note how much has changed in the media, post-Leveson. Absolutely sod all!!! Nor will it!

Then they got McDonalds and the supermarkets in to write their policy on food and agriculture, and advertising. Note: no moves to restrict advertising junk food to children, and no action on supermarkets after all the horse-meat nonsense, and no increased labelling of salt content etc. What a surprise!!!

Now with this, its just a continuation of them saying to their mates - all of course donors - What would you like? Write us a list and we'll sort it out for you. Just sign the cheque and leave it blank, we'll fill out the rest. Do you reckon you'll be looking for a non-exec director in a couple of years, by any chance?

I love it when they then refer to this as 'self-regulation'. I wish they'd refer to it as what it actually is: a total absence of regulation

To be fair, as a nation we didn't vote them in last time round. They're just acting like we did. In fact, they're acting like they won a landslide with the greatest electoral mandate in democratic history. The ****s!!!

Remember Daves manifesto pledge "There will be no top-down re-organisation of the NHS"

The bare-faced cheek of it is pretty amazing... even though nothing really surprises me about our incumbent politicos.

Besides which, if joe public's experience doesn't match the justification for these pish-poor reforms, you have to seriously wonder at the ConDem electoral strategy, or what their response will be when things go seriously/even more pear-shaped*. Whatever the platitudes about choice & competition and the merits of "outside expertise", the actual reality consists of overloaded acute care, dangerously understaffed wards and GP/out-of-hours cover being run by skeleton crews (often by private providers - Serco & Harmoni have form for this). Now, there's plenty of things about the NHS that need changing... but the top-down confusion of these reforms is actually making things worse. And in that context, Seddon's comment about Staffs & South London (in his Daily Mailograph puff piece - essentially, why we should hand the NHS over to Corporate Health, Inc.) was either deeply-disingenuous or wilfully ignorant about what went wrong at those Trusts.